From owner-freebsd-current Wed Jan 13 11:00:26 1999 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id LAA00880 for freebsd-current-outgoing; Wed, 13 Jan 1999 11:00:26 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from gatekeeper.whistle.com (gatekeeper.whistle.com [207.76.204.2]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id LAA00866 for ; Wed, 13 Jan 1999 11:00:21 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from ambrisko@whistle.com) Received: (from smap@localhost) by gatekeeper.whistle.com (8.8.8/8.8.7) id JAA04255 for ; Wed, 13 Jan 1999 09:27:31 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from ambrisko@whistle.com) Received: from alpo.whistle.com(unknown 207.76.204.38) by gatekeeper.whistle.com via smap (V2.0) id xma004252; Wed, 13 Jan 99 09:27:21 -0800 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by alpo.whistle.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) id JAA12134 for ; Wed, 13 Jan 1999 09:09:02 -0800 (PST) Received: from crab.whistle.com(207.76.205.112), claiming to be "whistle.com" via SMTP by alpo.whistle.com, id smtpdd12131; Wed Jan 13 17:08:57 1999 Received: (from ambrisko@localhost) by whistle.com (8.9.1/8.9.1) id JAA29927 for current@FreeBSD.ORG; Wed, 13 Jan 1999 09:08:47 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from ambrisko) From: Doug Ambrisko Message-Id: <199901131708.JAA29927@whistle.com> Subject: Re: netboot & ELF kernels In-Reply-To: <199901131212.OAA10481@ceia.nordier.com> from Robert Nordier at "Jan 13, 99 02:12:01 pm" To: current@FreeBSD.ORG Date: Wed, 13 Jan 1999 09:08:43 -0800 (PST) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL29 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Robert Nordier writes: | Bjoern Fischer wrote: | | > I've recently noticed that ELF is now default on a | > kernel build. No problems with ELF kernels on a server | > machine, but netboot fails to load an ELF kernel (lack | > of support, it seems). | > | > Is it on the list to add support for ELF kernels to | > netboot? Or, is there any alternative way to boot | > a diskless machine (diskless -- not even a floppy)? | | One alternative is Etherboot (http://www.slug.org.au) which Doug | Ambrisko has patched for FreeBSD and which | will most likely be added to the ports collection. | | I've been sitting on this for some time (sorry, Doug), but will | try to finish looking at it in the next few days. I've been meaning to ask you about them. I know they are not perfect but something is better then nothing! Hopefully some other people can work on making it better once the port is made. The complicated part is that it depends on the linux-devel package and a slight change. What I did was replace the linux ld with a perl script to run brandelf linux after the ld was done. This was due to the Etherboot package creating static bins that are required during the build process. This package has a lot of nice features: - Select different kernels to boot (including Dos images) - Pass in FreeBSD boot flags via bootp request - uses tftp for loading kernel (some may argue this is not a nice feature but I like it for a bunch of reasons ... no need for nfs if kernel has a mfs file system) - Supports more ethernet cards then FreeBSD netboot - This package seems to be actively supported - Supports both FreeBSD ELF & a.out formats I use this package all the time every day ... well my regression system here does. I like being able to control it via dhcpd. If I should send it to someone else to look at I can or maybe I can get Julian or Archie to add it. Doug A. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message